Originally slated for release in June, the game will now be coming out around the holiday season at the end of the year on account of the developer’s desire to make full use of the extra crowdfunds the game raised. A closed beta will take place in June, giving players a chance to try Hyper Light Drifter out without waiting too long.

“After heavy development, much discussion and examination, the team and I have decided that we will not rush the project,” Alex Preston, the game’s lead designer, wrote in a Kickstarter update. “There's an intense desire to create a polished, beautiful experience and we need more time to do so.

“We've spent these past months working incredibly hard - on weekends and beyond - scheduling, planning and budgeting how we can best utilize the resources you, the backers, have so graciously given us to create the game everyone deserves… Since we have been given this remarkable opportunity, the project has evolved, requires polish and finesse that I was not originally afforded. We are able to make the experience whole, into the full vision I had wanted it to be.”

Set in a dark but colorful world and featuring gameplay described as “the best parts of A Link to the Past and Diablo, evolved”, Hyper Light Drifter appeared on Kickstarter last fall asking for a modest $27,000 in funding, and ended up blowing right past that with a whopping total of $645,158. You can see how all that money would make Heart Machine want to craft something a little more ambitious than it had originally intended to.

The game will first launch on PC (via Steam), followed by releases on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, Mac, Linux and Ouya shortly thereafter.

A writer, journalist, and aspiring storyteller, Peter Grimm has been gaming since the days of the Nintendo 64, and reporting on the goings-on in the World of Gaming since late 2011. His base of writing operations is located within the void between Here and There, or so he would have you think.

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